Just had a quick add up of re-chassising my Landy, and changing a fiew bits along the way to make it nicer. Its added up to alot, and the chassis itself seemed so reasonable.

Its come to about £4.5K very rough estimate. Those of you who've done it end up spending this kind of money?

Rich.

woods767 said:

Just had a quick add up of re-chassising my Landy, and changing a fiew bits along the way to make it nicer. Its added up to alot, and the chassis itself seemed so reasonable.

Its come to about £4.5K very rough estimate. Those of you who've done it end up spending this kind of money?

Rich.

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Holy sh1t. What else did you replace, everything?

Do you need things like a new loom? Take that out unless yours has been burnt to a crisp or something. Clean it all up and repair/renew any bits and then give it a full new heat shrink sleeve where possible or a good wrap of quality electrical tape. New connectors and things can be fitted or get some little brushes electrical contact cleaner and clean up the old one. If you need new ones for the rear lights make it yourself, it’s not tricky. The main one should be fine to be honest.

To be honest I don't think you need a £1000 for little nasty’s - that would be for major nasty’s.

Do you need to replace all the other stuff at the moment? For example, just change the chassis & bulkhead just now - since everything has been off and back on with lots of copper slip, when it comes to putting on new shockers and radius arms and things in the future it’s all going to come off easily enough.

Knocking off the loom and radius arms and the £1000 contingency money and making it more like £250 brings the whole price down to about £3000.

Paint £200 – are you planning on doing the whole thing? If it’s just the bulkhead get a couple cans of special metal primer, a couple of top coat and that will do your bulkhead. You only need to do the visible bits – or just leave the painting until you are ready to do the whole vehicle.

Your trying to do a complete rebuild in one go, which is perfectly acceptable but it’s also instantly very cash intensive. It’s a fair bit of work; can you keep it off the road for a while?

You could either get your chassis and bulkhead and do that now, get it back on the road then over the coming months do all the other bits, or you could take it off the road for a good while and do the rebuild most landy owners dream of. Take your time over it; £4K odd over 4/5months will not be as bad as going out now and buying it all now.

I did my chassis and below rebuild about this time last year, the bulkhead didn’t get done until Easter this year and doors and things are still not done yet, the interior is half done, painting is happening now (meant to be this weekend but not now since the IP is coming off) – so by this time next year it will probably be complete, its been an on road project – 2 years to do – cost wise its spread fairly evenly – so never did I see a price tag of thousands in front of me.

Doesn't putting a new chassis under it mean it has to go on a Q plate to be legal? Does it really need a new chassis? Is it past fixing?

(Yeah I know, there's loads on the road with new chassis that aren't on Q plates but technically....etc,etc)

Its just a replacment part - there is no way of them telling anyway.

I have priced it up for more like a re-build, and was thinking of re-spraying the whole thing too and painting the chassis. I put the loom in as i thought it would be neer impossible to recover it, but for £400 its gona be worth a try.

If I can do it for more like £3K i could just about afford/justify it, but I know theres gona be tones of bolts and bits thats gona brake, all fittings for the bulk head, seals, stuff like that, wich would unlikely fall far short of a grand.

Your right about the radius arms and trailing arms, i dont need them, or the springs for that matter, i can sort that out another time. The gear box and exhaust is so i can tidy up my Disco 200 conversion, do it properly.

Chassis is not that bad, got a fiew bits of welding here and there, passes its MOTs. I asked a guy at AJS to rate it out of 10 and he said 6-7. However, it twists when i off road, the doors wont open properly on a big axel twist, and its not gona last forever. Its had the outriggers replaced, and a new rear cross member (previous owner), and though the front end looks solid, i found some holes under the radiator when i took it out to do the cam belt. I patched them up with steel plate, but its the structual element of it im worried about, especialy when im winching.

Rich.

Its not hard to recover the loom - a friend of mine changes LR chassis for a living and he takes the looms out the chassis, cleans it up refits it - unless the customer requests a new one.

When i did my bulkhead (electricaly the most involved job) I wasn't sure how the loom was going to go - After marking every single wire and similar coloured connectors I pulled it all apart and soon had it lying in a big pile attached to the fuse box lying on the ground.

This is where I made the mistake, for the sake of 30mins work I should have AT least re taped it all the made it a bit neater looking! It came out and went straight into the new bulkhead so I was just to eager! But I didn't have ANY problems with my loom and it was butchered by the police once upon a time.

As long as you don't go pulling on things and do it carefully there is no reason why the loom won't go back together. I found that cutting the main looms to the wings was easiest (saves undoing all those bullet connectors behind the lights) and resoldered them on rebuild. Cutting the whole loom also allowed me to put heat shrink along the full length of the wing looms and relocate them to a more sensible place instead of down behind the inner arch/spat where it rubs and shorts out.

You can replace the rear light loom with a singe piece of trailer cable if need be.

It sounds like your chassis is about the same state mine was in - on first inspection I thought - fook that could have been fixed up but once you get it out and see it its a bloody mess - gives you peace of mind - and you just know that MOT's are not going to be an issue with the standard chassis rot syndrome.

Go to an engineering firm and tell them what your doing - and ask them for a load of M5, M6, M8 & M10 nuts, bolts, washers, nylocs and you will need a handfull of (M6 I think) pan head machine screws (see link below) these are used to hold things like the fuse box onto the bulkhead, door hinge catches and things.

Replace EVERY nut, bolt and washer - the only ones it might be worth buying from craddocks are the bulkead to chassis bolts because they are super long and you only need two.

If you buy them from screwfix get the good ones - when I did my bulkhead I was lucky that at the time I worked for a firm that did lighting and sound systems and things - I was able to go into the stores and get all the washers, nuts and bolts, heat shrink, clips, cable ties, crimps, sealant I could ever need - so I can't honestly give you a price for all the "bits" but its not going to be more than £60 as long as you don't try getting them from B&Q.



(Pan Head Machine Screw A2 Stainless Steel M6 x 12mm Pack of 50 - Screwfix.com, Where the Trade Buys)

Thanks I will definitly do that, i am well exprienced at the irritation of loosing a couple of days to not having the correct bolts at hand.

Does anyone know the differences between a TD5 chassis and a 200 chassis? TD5 chassis are about half the price in some places, i guess this is as they are left over stock from landrover.

Richard.

I looked into getting a td5 chassis as they seem loads cheaper but you need to change engine mounts which are welded and the gearbox mounts but i think these are bolted. There are probably loads of other small differences to though.